What you can do to support my music

I’ve had a lot of encouraging feedback these past few weeks from friends who are excited about my pending CD release. Some folks have already purchased their copy and some have even given me money gifts to support the recording costs. That’s wonderful! However, most of you might not have the cash to do that and aside from buying your own copy you might think that there’s not much you can do to help. Actually, there is a lot of ways for everyone who enjoys my songs to get word out and help create some viral marketing. Yeah!

So, here’s what you can do to support my music:

Share

Use facebook, myspace, or twitter to share links, streaming audio, and photos with your friends. A few days ago, I posted a soundcloud link to a song from the CD, “Walk the Talk” on facebook. When I share this stuff with you, you can then share it again with your friends. Let them know that you dig it and why.

Comment and “Like”

On facebook, you might have noticed that there’s a “live feed” and a “news feed”. These days, I mostly just read the news feed. This feed is generated by facebook based on what’s getting comments, likes, and has relevance to you. So, if my link to song gets 10+ comments it has a greater chance of showing up on a lot of feeds. Take 2 seconds to write a comment as simple as “nice!” or “you rock!” and we can make the song pop up on more readers.

Email

Not everyone is on facebook or spends a lot of time online. Send an email to your friends who are interested in worship music. Let them know what you like about my songs. You don’t have to pitch my CD like an infomercial, just be honest. “Hey, I think you would dig this guys stuff.”

Put a store on your profile

If you go to my facebook profile, you will find a tab for MyStore at the top. If you go to that tab, you can find a link for how to post the store to your profile.

Christmas Gifts

I have been really pushing to get this thing done before Christmas for obvious reasons. Maybe you would like to give my CD as gifts to friends or relatives who are not familiar with my stuff. I would love to see my CD end up in the hands of people who have never met me of heard of me. My CD is not a money making venture; it’s an attempt to share the songs that God has given to me with the rest of the world. So, if you want to buy a CD for everyone in your family, at your office, on your church staff, or whatever call or email meand I will give you a “bulk rate” discount.

Release Party and Pre-release Party

New City Fellowship in Chattanooga TN is hosting a pre-release party on November 23 and New City Fellowship in St Louis is hosting a release party sometime in early December. You can invite friends and contacts who might be interested in hearing my songs. I am hoping to create a PDF flyer that I can give you to post all over town as the date approaches. Also, I would love, love, love, for you to shoot video, take pics, and copiously bootleg the whole thing and plaster it all over the web.

Book a worship event

Maybe you don’t live in Chattanooga or St Louis. Can you talk with your church leaders about organizing a little worship event to hear my songs? Maybe your church is interested in how to better understand and practice multicultural music or how God’s call to justice and mercy can be incorporated into our worship services.

Pray

This one is not usually listed in the industry newsletters and blogs. But, this is probably the most important thing that you can do for me and my music. Pray for my marriage. Pray for my creativity. Pray for my team at NCF. Pray for the church to grow. Pray for walls to come down. Pray for the earth to be filled with God’s glory as the waters cover the sea.

I am not signed to a record label. I funded this recording mostly from giving guitar lessons in my free time. I am desperately in need of help from those of you who enjoy my songs and who want to see this kind of worship music grow in the church. We need each other. I can’t do this without your help.

If you want to be more connected to my ministry, songwriting, recordings, and writing please share your contact info with me. I have a very good tool for creating a database in my Nimbit store. Click on the contact sharing link and fill in the spaces. If you join the mailing list, I can give you resources to spread the word as well as perhaps some goodies to share my appreciation for your help.